Nirrvash
I'm genuinely curious - and nervous - about what you're going to say about the chapter. This one gave me quite a headache getting it to the point I envisioned, or at close to it
Enjoy!
Was I really the only one who heard those eerie voices? At first, when I pointed it out, everyone grew wary, looking around and trying to listen. But as they failed to hear what I heard, doubt appeared on their faces. Understandable, hurtful nonetheless.
Only Idleaf remained curious, trying to hear what I heard, asking for details. And I gave them to her, hoping that others would start paying more attention to it too if they knew what I was dealing with. It didn’t change a thing, though. They just chalked it up to my quirkiness.
“Seriously, you don’t hear that? You gotta be shitting me?” As we went on, the voices only grew louder, so loud in fact that if I didn’t know better, I’d say they were just over the gentle hill ahead.
“Squad Four, stop,” Sergeant Pinescar bellowed.
“Sir?” Stella, our squad leader, asked. “Is this about what Korra hears? It’s weighing on my mind too, but isn’t it just...?”
The man raised his hand to stop her and checked our surroundings warily before he spoke. “There are many stories about labyrinths. Half of them are just made up, and some are so far-fetched they’re hard to believe. The same goes for the theories of the researchers. In the end, it’s up to everyone to make their own judgment on what they believe or not. But...” He said and looked at me. “...it’s a huge mistake to dismiss what your squadmate says and ignore it.”
“I didn’t...” Stella tried to object. He didn’t let her.
“Sure, it could just be nerves getting to her, and it’s up to you to tell. One of the challenges of being a squad leader is knowing whether to follow a hunch or go with reason.”
Our leader clenched her fists, obviously wanting to say a word or two and explain to the Sergeant how she saw it and that he was wrong about her. Yet she didn’t dare interrupt him again.
“Sometimes you have to swallow your own pride,” Yeah, Pinescar wasn’t blind to her hubris. “...and need to take into account the abilities of the individual members of your squad, especially if it’s a terran like Ironhoof, or someone like Grey.”
“You mean their...?”
“Yes, Private Palemoon, their ears, their sight, their sense of smell. There is no shame in admitting that in many ways their bodies are superior to humans, leaving aside the effects of the various skills, of course. Their instincts, in particular, can be very useful if you listen.”
Pinescar was right. That was, as long as one kept their instincts from taking control. It did make me wonder, though, where it all came from. After all, as far as I knew, among the city guards, Meneur was the first terran.
“See, Grey and Ironhoof know what I’m talking about.”
What? Meneur too? Finally! It wasn’t just me whose body language spoke her thoughts out.
“But instinct is not something unique to them. Humans have it too, and so have perception...sixth sense, if you want. Just keep that in your mind, Private.”
“I-I will, sir,” Stella stammered, not knowing what to say to that, looking around nervously, just like Pinescar. “So you’re saying there’s more to what Korra hears? I read about the Labyrinth Instance Theory. Do you think that’s it? That’s what Korra hears, people from other instances of the Labyrinth?”
That theory Deckard told me about had its own name? Damn. My interest was piqued, though. I found it strange that no matter where we moved, I could still hear the distressed voices as if they were moving with us. Either it was a fucking coincidence, or there was more to it than I thought.
“It could be. Even among those city guards who have ever dived into Fallen’s Cry, are few who have encountered a similar phenomenon. Generally, it’s reported by those who have a higher level of sensitivity to the labyrinths, and Grey here is extremely sensitive.”
“W-what? This is the first I’ve heard of it.” I said, taken aback. “I mean, yeah. I’m more receptive to Fallen’s Cry, but...extremely, sir? Really?”
Pinescar shrugged. “That’s the assessment you got. Not as rare as you think, but there aren’t many people who hear Traiana’s cry every time they travel between floors or touch one of the labyrinth blocks like you in Castiana.”
“You can hear the whiny bitch when you touch the labyrinth blocks?” Harper asked, bewildered but not envying me at all.
“Didn’t I tell you about that? I thought I did. Yeah, I mean, it’s on a similar cooldown as the shit on her statue, but if I touch the blocks, I can hear her a lot clearer, even the noise of the battlefield she fell on.”
Looking in the direction the noise was coming from, I wondered. Was that an echo of the ancient battlefield I heard, after all? That honestly sounded like a better option to me; that it was just some sort of veil of memories and not an actual fracture in the space.
“Well, yeah. You mentioned something like that. It’s just...”
“We thought you were messing with us,” Freyde finished for Harper. “You know...that you were exaggerating and all. It was at Drunken Filly’s, and you had a few.”
“Was it after my Class Evolution or when I bitched about my bare feet?” The point was to see if I blabbed to them about my run-in with Traiana.
“The latter,” said Meneur. “You also mentioned that you saw Traiana down here in the labyrinth.”
‘Shit!’
“Wait. Don’t tell me that was true, too. You saw that bitch?” Harper marveled. Now she, too, was looking around as if expecting the patron of this labyrinth to appear.
“I was hungover, and as I understand it, at that point, your mind is wide open, defenses down. To make it short, anyone can see her if they get wasted enough and enter Fallen’s Cry.”
“Not true and not recommended, Grey,” disputed Sergeant Pinescar and raised his hand to stop me from arguing. “First, I must strongly point out that going into the Labyrinth drunk or just hungover is complete stupidity. Not only are you putting yourself in harm’s way, but the lives of others on your team, too. Second, don’t even think about doing shit like that on your duty.”
“What about in our spare time, sir?” To my surprise, it wasn’t Harper who asked, sounding keen to give it a try, but Freyde. “What?” He asked when he saw my judging look. “Didn’t you see that statue up there? That girl looks hot. And the way you described her at Drunken Filly... her apparition is even more lifelike.”
I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, whether to be sorry for him or let him follow his heart. Although I doubted it was his heart that aroused his interest in Traiana.
“You really should get a girlfriend, Pointy Ears,” Harper almost laughed, patting him on the shoulder, a smirk on her face.
He returned her smirk. “I’m not the one ogling every guy in the barracks, Baker Girl. Besides, don’t tell me you’re not the least bit curious.”
“Well, before this goes any further, I’ll say that what you do in your spare time is your business, Welkes,” said Pinescar. “However, I strongly advise you to do so - if you choose to be so dumb - in the company of sober individuals, even if it is only a visit to the first floor. I can’t stress this enough, do not underestimate the effects of alcohol. It clouds your judgment, slows your reactions, not to mention makes you lose focus. Let me remind you that many skills require quite a bit of concentration. And then there’s the fact that Grey was talking about and why we’re having this conversation. It leaves your mind exposed,” he said and paused to give everyone time to understand the implications of what the booze and ensuing hangover brought with them. If they ran into a mind mage at that moment, they’d be fucked.
“I’m glad there aren’t any dimwits among you,” he said when he saw that everyone understood. “That brings me to my third point, and that is the fact that even with a hangover, you are not guaranteed to see Traiana’s apparition. Just as there are people like Grey who are sensitive to labyrinths, there are those who are deaf and blind to them. Right, Palemoon?”
Oh, her? Shit. It did explain a lot, though. I mean her, not giving much credit to what I was hearing and all the shit about Traiana.
“Yes, sir.”
“H-how will I know, sir?” Freyde asked, genuine concern in his voice. “You know that I’m not like her? No offense Stella.”
“For one, you’re less likely to cry at the sight of the statue of Traiana up in the square, Welkes.”
Stella nodded. “I only cried the first time I saw her and never again.”
That was definitely not his case, as I had seen the quarter gnome several times with tears streaming down his cheeks. And he knew it too, visibly relieved that he still had a shot at seeing Traiana. His zeal didn’t last long, though, as he finally noticed the angry glare Stella had been throwing at him the whole time. He ought to have shut up and done so a long time ago.
“Sir, what about what Korra hears, then?” she asked Sergeant Pinescar, turning to me. “You still hear it, or...?”
“I wish I didn’t.” I really did. The voices were in great distress that penetrated through the veil, reaching my bones. I was itching to get out of this place but also fearful of taking another step. “They’ve gotten even stronger as we stand here.”
She bit her lip, struggling to believe something she hadn’t heard herself. “I see. That’s concerning. Anyone else?” Stella asked. “Meneurmut? What your instincts tell you.”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” the mage said, casting an apologetic glance in my direction. Honestly, he had nothing to apologize for.
“My instincts are telling me shit too, Stella, and it’s damn annoying.” As hard as it was for me to admit, it was the truth. “I’d rather have my hair bristled up from my ears to the tip of my tail, my guts screaming at me to get out of here than all the silence.”
“All right,” she said carefully, looking at Meneur again. “Well, and can you hear anything?”
“No, but Tauruses are not known for their hearing. You could say that in this regard, we are worse off than humans.”
Stella nodded, and then, biting her bottom lip, turned to the spirit. “What about you Idleaf, can you hear what Korra hears?”
To my dismay, even the spirit shook her head, the concern on her face, the worry about me in her eyes. Whatever I was hearing was beyond the ability of her form and... “I feel a misshaping in space, though.”
“The what? M-missha...”
“Where?” asked Pinescar at once, without even doubting her claim.
Idleaf pointed to her left, from where I heard the voices coming loudest. “Over there, it’s pretty wide and stretches over there,” she said, tracing a quarter of an arc with her hand across the direction of our way. From what she said, we were walking right into whatever it was. The very fact that she could sense these distortions....or, let’s say, shifts in space, wasn’t so strange, given her ability to use teleportation magic. She had to sense the space in some way, and Pinescar was clearly aware of that, too.
“Private Palemoon, I’m temporarily taking over command of Squad Four.” It wasn’t a question or a request, just a simple statement of fact, and no one objected, not even Stella. Nevertheless, the gravity of his voice completely shifted the mood in the squad, making everyone nervous.
Something was wrong.
“Yes, sir. T-the command is yours. But...?” Stella didn’t question his decision; she just wanted to know what was going on. “There was nothing I read about these anomalies being dangerous.”
They weren’t? That was good to hear, yet it failed to put me at ease. I wasn’t stupid enough to think everything was written down in books. A prime example was the ancient history of Eleaden, the time when Traiana lived, and these labyrinths were built.
“Is it moving, Idleaf?” Pinescar asked the spirit instead of answering our squad leader
“Slowly.”
“Where?”
“Towards us.”
“Fuck!”
“It’s interesting, though,” Idleaf objected, her eyes fixed somewhere where she perceived the shift in space.
“All right, we’re going back,” Pinescar bellowed, ignoring Idleaf’s last remark, and while in many ways he may have seemed to overreact, no one raised a voice against his decision. “To your question, Palemoon. I don’t know if it’s fucking dangerous. But I don’t know shit about it, neither do you, so...”
“If we can avoid it, we damn well should, shouldn’t we, sir?”
“Exactly. Would you stick your head in a hole in a wall covered in blood you stumbled upon? No. So, get moving!”
And we did, briskly retracing our steps, following the Thread taken care of by Meneur. It wasn’t long before we were back on the hill where we took our lunch break.
“Grey, Idleaf?” Sergeant Pinescar asked the two of us; no need for him to say more. I perked up my ears, listening. Then, when what reached my ears was nothing but the rustling of grass in the ever-present breeze of the floor, an overwhelming relief washed over me. “It seems we are good, sir.”
“That funny space is out of the range of my perception,” added Idleaf. While it was plain to see that she would love to explore the shift in space, and there was a hint of a letdown in her voice, the serious mood that had fallen on Squad Four didn’t let her whine about it.
“Good, that’s good. Still, we’d better get back to the platform and re-enter. Just to be sure.” In a sense, he wanted to reset the whole floor, no longer linger in one where stuff like this was happening, not when he had a bunch of rookies to take care of. “Again, Grey and Idleaf in front. The rest spaced out behind them. Let’s go.”
Leading the way was nothing new to me. After all, I did that every time it was my turn to track beasts, and as a tank, I almost always led the charge. What was getting on my nerves now, though, was not the prospect of another fight; that was something I would have very much welcomed right now, but the fear that with each step I took, there was a chance I would hear the eerie voices that didn’t belong here.
With tracks in the grass long lost like the bodies of the beasts we had slain, we had no choice but to follow the magic line of the Thread as it wound its way through hills, valleys, and meadows I didn’t recognize. The landscape shifted since we passed through here, changed beyond recognition. Not surprising, as it was nothing new. The labyrinth floors did that, moving slowly to confuse the seekers. Actually, if one paid attention, it could be seen even with the naked eye as the hills turned into meadows and the valleys grew into hills. If anything, it added to the eeriness of the whole situation.
Nevertheless, retracing our steps, we went over the hill, getting closer to the platform we came in from. Everything went well, too well to my taste, and that was eating away at my mind.
That’s why I froze in my tracks when my ears twitched.
“Grey?”
Instead of answering, I listened, praying I was wrong, that it was a rabbit grazing on the grass I’d heard and not something behind the veil of twisted space. Yet, against all my wishes, it wasn’t a beast.
“Just...just ahead of us, sir.”
“Oh, really?” Idleaf asked, her interest piqued. “We’re too far away for me to tell. Can we get closer?” As hard as she tried, she just couldn’t quite tame her curiosity.
Pinescar actually swore under his breath, sighed, and thought before signing again. “We don’t have a lot of options. The safest thing would be to find out how wide that shit is and if we can get around it.”
Idleaf was the only one who cheered at the prospect, humming happily as we set off. I actually found her humming quite soothing because no matter how cautiously we threaded, we were getting close to whatever was in front of us. Again, with every step I took, the noise reaching my ears grew louder, clearer, and more bone-chilling. It wasn’t so much what I heard that gave me the creeps - well; it was. After all, it was people’s voices, albeit despairing ones, and occasionally what I would describe as the roars of beasts, things I had heard many times before. What scared me was the thought that I might cross over to wherever it was out there on the other side.
It reminded me too much of my getting snatched into this world by the Fae.
Sure, there were Fallen’s Cry teleportation platforms. I used them so many times that I should be used to something like hopping from place to place. Hell, Idleaf moved me as far as Esulmor. But the difference was that in those cases, I more or less knew where I would end up.
That was not true of the veil we were approaching. I, we, could have ended up in a place of no return, and that thought was eating away at my mind.
Usually, [Indomitable Will] worked wonders for that; now, no matter how much I hit my mind with it, I couldn’t get rid of the eerie feeling seeping into my bones, my core. The worst part of it, though, was that my instincts were still silent.
“Yup, the misshaping is there,” Idleaf announced the moment we got close enough for her to sense the ‘misshaping’ in space. My ears were not wrong, and the eerie thing was right in front of us. And not just there. As we got closer and Idleaf was able to say more, we found the shift in space stretched in a wide arc in all directions.
“Don’t tell me....,” Harper gushed and stopped short while trying to glimpse the veil none of us could see.
“Yeah,” Meneur nodded, thinking the same thing as her. “We seem to be trapped in a circle.”
“It can’t be!” Freyde strongly disagreed. “Traps are found in the labyrinths only from the floor of one hundred and one and below.”
“That’s correct, Welkes,” Pinescar said, deep in thought. “By all rights, this shouldn’t be a trap. Yet it seems like one to me, too.”
“Fuck!” Harper cursed softly.
“Sir, shouldn’t we just try, you know....go through?”
“I would not be so rash, Palemoon, not yet,” said Sergeant. “This is nothing I’ve heard of happening....”
“So this is the first time? Fuck me! Why are we so damn lucky,” Harper groaned, completely forgetting to address Pinescar properly. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Palemoon. I’d rather try my luck there,” she said, pointing vaguely ahead at the shift in space. “...than pissing my pants here. And no fucking word, Pointy Ears.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Freyde just held up his hands, backing away.
“I’ll forgive your attitude, for now, Breadbaker. Don’t make it a habit, though. About your suggestion, there are plenty of guys and gals like you, the kind who prefer to face their fears and the unknown head-on. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but before we do it, I’d try to get around that thing. We don’t know for sure if it’s a circle. And one more thing. It would be a huge mistake to think that this is the first time something like this has happened in the labyrinth. If anything, those who encountered similar shit either didn’t report it or...” Harper wasn’t the only one who swallowed dry when he didn’t finish the sentence and only hinted at a second possibility. They were either dead or still trapped somewhere in Fallen’s Cry.
“You think the voices I’m hearing from the other side belong to the ones who tried to get through, sir?”
“I don’t know, Grey. But call it a hunch; going through that is the last thing I want to do.”
There was no denying that there wasn’t an ounce of curiosity in me. I wondered what would happen if we just tried to walk through, if we would really find ourselves somewhere unknown or just continue on our way. I wanted to know who the voices belonged to, but not so badly that I’d risk getting trapped in there with them becoming one of those voices seekers sometimes hear in the labyrinth. Simply, I couldn’t agree more with Sergeant Pinescar on this.
“Any problem keeping the Thread up, Ironhoof?” the man asked, making sure that even though the magic thread connecting the ring on Meneur’s finger to the disc on the platform out there somewhere snaked through the distortion in space, we still had the connection and essentially the way back.
“All seems well, sir.”
It wasn’t that we wouldn’t be able to find our way back without the tool. After all, this was only the tenth floor, a floor on which I was still able to use the trick Deckard had taught - the runes on the labyrinth blocks thing. However, there was no denying that it was nice to know we weren’t completely fucked…yet.
Nirrvash So...? Was it a bunch of nonsense or well-delivered tension?
Nirrvash
I'm genuinely curious - and nervous - about what you're going to say about the chapter. This one gave me quite a headache getting it to the point I envisioned, or at close to it
Enjoy!
Was I really the only one who heard those eerie voices? At first, when I pointed it out, everyone grew wary, looking around and trying to listen. But as they failed to hear what I heard, doubt appeared on their faces. Understandable, hurtful nonetheless.
Only Idleaf remained curious, trying to hear what I heard, asking for details. And I gave them to her, hoping that others would start paying more attention to it too if they knew what I was dealing with. It didn’t change a thing, though. They just chalked it up to my quirkiness.
“Seriously, you don’t hear that? You gotta be shitting me?” As we went on, the voices only grew louder, so loud in fact that if I didn’t know better, I’d say they were just over the gentle hill ahead.
“Squad Four, stop,” Sergeant Pinescar bellowed.
“Sir?” Stella, our squad leader, asked. “Is this about what Korra hears? It’s weighing on my mind too, but isn’t it just...?”
The man raised his hand to stop her and checked our surroundings warily before he spoke. “There are many stories about labyrinths. Half of them are just made up, and some are so far-fetched they’re hard to believe. The same goes for the theories of the researchers. In the end, it’s up to everyone to make their own judgment on what they believe or not. But...” He said and looked at me. “...it’s a huge mistake to dismiss what your squadmate says and ignore it.”
“I didn’t...” Stella tried to object. He didn’t let her.
“Sure, it could just be nerves getting to her, and it’s up to you to tell. One of the challenges of being a squad leader is knowing whether to follow a hunch or go with reason.”
Our leader clenched her fists, obviously wanting to say a word or two and explain to the Sergeant how she saw it and that he was wrong about her. Yet she didn’t dare interrupt him again.
“Sometimes you have to swallow your own pride,” Yeah, Pinescar wasn’t blind to her hubris. “...and need to take into account the abilities of the individual members of your squad, especially if it’s a terran like Ironhoof, or someone like Grey.”
“You mean their...?”
“Yes, Private Palemoon, their ears, their sight, their sense of smell. There is no shame in admitting that in many ways their bodies are superior to humans, leaving aside the effects of the various skills, of course. Their instincts, in particular, can be very useful if you listen.”
Pinescar was right. That was, as long as one kept their instincts from taking control. It did make me wonder, though, where it all came from. After all, as far as I knew, among the city guards, Meneur was the first terran.
“See, Grey and Ironhoof know what I’m talking about.”
What? Meneur too? Finally! It wasn’t just me whose body language spoke her thoughts out.
“But instinct is not something unique to them. Humans have it too, and so have perception...sixth sense, if you want. Just keep that in your mind, Private.”
“I-I will, sir,” Stella stammered, not knowing what to say to that, looking around nervously, just like Pinescar. “So you’re saying there’s more to what Korra hears? I read about the Labyrinth Instance Theory. Do you think that’s it? That’s what Korra hears, people from other instances of the Labyrinth?”
That theory Deckard told me about had its own name? Damn. My interest was piqued, though. I found it strange that no matter where we moved, I could still hear the distressed voices as if they were moving with us. Either it was a fucking coincidence, or there was more to it than I thought.
“It could be. Even among those city guards who have ever dived into Fallen’s Cry, are few who have encountered a similar phenomenon. Generally, it’s reported by those who have a higher level of sensitivity to the labyrinths, and Grey here is extremely sensitive.”
“W-what? This is the first I’ve heard of it.” I said, taken aback. “I mean, yeah. I’m more receptive to Fallen’s Cry, but...extremely, sir? Really?”
Pinescar shrugged. “That’s the assessment you got. Not as rare as you think, but there aren’t many people who hear Traiana’s cry every time they travel between floors or touch one of the labyrinth blocks like you in Castiana.”
“You can hear the whiny bitch when you touch the labyrinth blocks?” Harper asked, bewildered but not envying me at all.
“Didn’t I tell you about that? I thought I did. Yeah, I mean, it’s on a similar cooldown as the shit on her statue, but if I touch the blocks, I can hear her a lot clearer, even the noise of the battlefield she fell on.”
Looking in the direction the noise was coming from, I wondered. Was that an echo of the ancient battlefield I heard, after all? That honestly sounded like a better option to me; that it was just some sort of veil of memories and not an actual fracture in the space.
“Well, yeah. You mentioned something like that. It’s just...”
“We thought you were messing with us,” Freyde finished for Harper. “You know...that you were exaggerating and all. It was at Drunken Filly’s, and you had a few.”
“Was it after my Class Evolution or when I bitched about my bare feet?” The point was to see if I blabbed to them about my run-in with Traiana.
“The latter,” said Meneur. “You also mentioned that you saw Traiana down here in the labyrinth.”
‘Shit!’
“Wait. Don’t tell me that was true, too. You saw that bitch?” Harper marveled. Now she, too, was looking around as if expecting the patron of this labyrinth to appear.
“I was hungover, and as I understand it, at that point, your mind is wide open, defenses down. To make it short, anyone can see her if they get wasted enough and enter Fallen’s Cry.”
“Not true and not recommended, Grey,” disputed Sergeant Pinescar and raised his hand to stop me from arguing. “First, I must strongly point out that going into the Labyrinth drunk or just hungover is complete stupidity. Not only are you putting yourself in harm’s way, but the lives of others on your team, too. Second, don’t even think about doing shit like that on your duty.”
“What about in our spare time, sir?” To my surprise, it wasn’t Harper who asked, sounding keen to give it a try, but Freyde. “What?” He asked when he saw my judging look. “Didn’t you see that statue up there? That girl looks hot. And the way you described her at Drunken Filly... her apparition is even more lifelike.”
I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, whether to be sorry for him or let him follow his heart. Although I doubted it was his heart that aroused his interest in Traiana.
“You really should get a girlfriend, Pointy Ears,” Harper almost laughed, patting him on the shoulder, a smirk on her face.
He returned her smirk. “I’m not the one ogling every guy in the barracks, Baker Girl. Besides, don’t tell me you’re not the least bit curious.”
“Well, before this goes any further, I’ll say that what you do in your spare time is your business, Welkes,” said Pinescar. “However, I strongly advise you to do so - if you choose to be so dumb - in the company of sober individuals, even if it is only a visit to the first floor. I can’t stress this enough, do not underestimate the effects of alcohol. It clouds your judgment, slows your reactions, not to mention makes you lose focus. Let me remind you that many skills require quite a bit of concentration. And then there’s the fact that Grey was talking about and why we’re having this conversation. It leaves your mind exposed,” he said and paused to give everyone time to understand the implications of what the booze and ensuing hangover brought with them. If they ran into a mind mage at that moment, they’d be fucked.
“I’m glad there aren’t any dimwits among you,” he said when he saw that everyone understood. “That brings me to my third point, and that is the fact that even with a hangover, you are not guaranteed to see Traiana’s apparition. Just as there are people like Grey who are sensitive to labyrinths, there are those who are deaf and blind to them. Right, Palemoon?”
Oh, her? Shit. It did explain a lot, though. I mean her, not giving much credit to what I was hearing and all the shit about Traiana.
“Yes, sir.”
“H-how will I know, sir?” Freyde asked, genuine concern in his voice. “You know that I’m not like her? No offense Stella.”
“For one, you’re less likely to cry at the sight of the statue of Traiana up in the square, Welkes.”
Stella nodded. “I only cried the first time I saw her and never again.”
That was definitely not his case, as I had seen the quarter gnome several times with tears streaming down his cheeks. And he knew it too, visibly relieved that he still had a shot at seeing Traiana. His zeal didn’t last long, though, as he finally noticed the angry glare Stella had been throwing at him the whole time. He ought to have shut up and done so a long time ago.
“Sir, what about what Korra hears, then?” she asked Sergeant Pinescar, turning to me. “You still hear it, or...?”
“I wish I didn’t.” I really did. The voices were in great distress that penetrated through the veil, reaching my bones. I was itching to get out of this place but also fearful of taking another step. “They’ve gotten even stronger as we stand here.”
She bit her lip, struggling to believe something she hadn’t heard herself. “I see. That’s concerning. Anyone else?” Stella asked. “Meneurmut? What your instincts tell you.”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” the mage said, casting an apologetic glance in my direction. Honestly, he had nothing to apologize for.
“My instincts are telling me shit too, Stella, and it’s damn annoying.” As hard as it was for me to admit, it was the truth. “I’d rather have my hair bristled up from my ears to the tip of my tail, my guts screaming at me to get out of here than all the silence.”
“All right,” she said carefully, looking at Meneur again. “Well, and can you hear anything?”
“No, but Tauruses are not known for their hearing. You could say that in this regard, we are worse off than humans.”
Stella nodded, and then, biting her bottom lip, turned to the spirit. “What about you Idleaf, can you hear what Korra hears?”
To my dismay, even the spirit shook her head, the concern on her face, the worry about me in her eyes. Whatever I was hearing was beyond the ability of her form and... “I feel a misshaping in space, though.”
“The what? M-missha...”
“Where?” asked Pinescar at once, without even doubting her claim.
Idleaf pointed to her left, from where I heard the voices coming loudest. “Over there, it’s pretty wide and stretches over there,” she said, tracing a quarter of an arc with her hand across the direction of our way. From what she said, we were walking right into whatever it was. The very fact that she could sense these distortions....or, let’s say, shifts in space, wasn’t so strange, given her ability to use teleportation magic. She had to sense the space in some way, and Pinescar was clearly aware of that, too.
“Private Palemoon, I’m temporarily taking over command of Squad Four.” It wasn’t a question or a request, just a simple statement of fact, and no one objected, not even Stella. Nevertheless, the gravity of his voice completely shifted the mood in the squad, making everyone nervous.
Something was wrong.
“Yes, sir. T-the command is yours. But...?” Stella didn’t question his decision; she just wanted to know what was going on. “There was nothing I read about these anomalies being dangerous.”
They weren’t? That was good to hear, yet it failed to put me at ease. I wasn’t stupid enough to think everything was written down in books. A prime example was the ancient history of Eleaden, the time when Traiana lived, and these labyrinths were built.
“Is it moving, Idleaf?” Pinescar asked the spirit instead of answering our squad leader
“Slowly.”
“Where?”
“Towards us.”
“Fuck!”
“It’s interesting, though,” Idleaf objected, her eyes fixed somewhere where she perceived the shift in space.
“All right, we’re going back,” Pinescar bellowed, ignoring Idleaf’s last remark, and while in many ways he may have seemed to overreact, no one raised a voice against his decision. “To your question, Palemoon. I don’t know if it’s fucking dangerous. But I don’t know shit about it, neither do you, so...”
“If we can avoid it, we damn well should, shouldn’t we, sir?”
“Exactly. Would you stick your head in a hole in a wall covered in blood you stumbled upon? No. So, get moving!”
And we did, briskly retracing our steps, following the Thread taken care of by Meneur. It wasn’t long before we were back on the hill where we took our lunch break.
“Grey, Idleaf?” Sergeant Pinescar asked the two of us; no need for him to say more. I perked up my ears, listening. Then, when what reached my ears was nothing but the rustling of grass in the ever-present breeze of the floor, an overwhelming relief washed over me. “It seems we are good, sir.”
“That funny space is out of the range of my perception,” added Idleaf. While it was plain to see that she would love to explore the shift in space, and there was a hint of a letdown in her voice, the serious mood that had fallen on Squad Four didn’t let her whine about it.
“Good, that’s good. Still, we’d better get back to the platform and re-enter. Just to be sure.” In a sense, he wanted to reset the whole floor, no longer linger in one where stuff like this was happening, not when he had a bunch of rookies to take care of. “Again, Grey and Idleaf in front. The rest spaced out behind them. Let’s go.”
Leading the way was nothing new to me. After all, I did that every time it was my turn to track beasts, and as a tank, I almost always led the charge. What was getting on my nerves now, though, was not the prospect of another fight; that was something I would have very much welcomed right now, but the fear that with each step I took, there was a chance I would hear the eerie voices that didn’t belong here.
With tracks in the grass long lost like the bodies of the beasts we had slain, we had no choice but to follow the magic line of the Thread as it wound its way through hills, valleys, and meadows I didn’t recognize. The landscape shifted since we passed through here, changed beyond recognition. Not surprising, as it was nothing new. The labyrinth floors did that, moving slowly to confuse the seekers. Actually, if one paid attention, it could be seen even with the naked eye as the hills turned into meadows and the valleys grew into hills. If anything, it added to the eeriness of the whole situation.
Nevertheless, retracing our steps, we went over the hill, getting closer to the platform we came in from. Everything went well, too well to my taste, and that was eating away at my mind.
That’s why I froze in my tracks when my ears twitched.
“Grey?”
Instead of answering, I listened, praying I was wrong, that it was a rabbit grazing on the grass I’d heard and not something behind the veil of twisted space. Yet, against all my wishes, it wasn’t a beast.
“Just...just ahead of us, sir.”
“Oh, really?” Idleaf asked, her interest piqued. “We’re too far away for me to tell. Can we get closer?” As hard as she tried, she just couldn’t quite tame her curiosity.
Pinescar actually swore under his breath, sighed, and thought before signing again. “We don’t have a lot of options. The safest thing would be to find out how wide that shit is and if we can get around it.”
Idleaf was the only one who cheered at the prospect, humming happily as we set off. I actually found her humming quite soothing because no matter how cautiously we threaded, we were getting close to whatever was in front of us. Again, with every step I took, the noise reaching my ears grew louder, clearer, and more bone-chilling. It wasn’t so much what I heard that gave me the creeps - well; it was. After all, it was people’s voices, albeit despairing ones, and occasionally what I would describe as the roars of beasts, things I had heard many times before. What scared me was the thought that I might cross over to wherever it was out there on the other side.
It reminded me too much of my getting snatched into this world by the Fae.
Sure, there were Fallen’s Cry teleportation platforms. I used them so many times that I should be used to something like hopping from place to place. Hell, Idleaf moved me as far as Esulmor. But the difference was that in those cases, I more or less knew where I would end up.
That was not true of the veil we were approaching. I, we, could have ended up in a place of no return, and that thought was eating away at my mind.
Usually, [Indomitable Will] worked wonders for that; now, no matter how much I hit my mind with it, I couldn’t get rid of the eerie feeling seeping into my bones, my core. The worst part of it, though, was that my instincts were still silent.
“Yup, the misshaping is there,” Idleaf announced the moment we got close enough for her to sense the ‘misshaping’ in space. My ears were not wrong, and the eerie thing was right in front of us. And not just there. As we got closer and Idleaf was able to say more, we found the shift in space stretched in a wide arc in all directions.
“Don’t tell me....,” Harper gushed and stopped short while trying to glimpse the veil none of us could see.
“Yeah,” Meneur nodded, thinking the same thing as her. “We seem to be trapped in a circle.”
“It can’t be!” Freyde strongly disagreed. “Traps are found in the labyrinths only from the floor of one hundred and one and below.”
“That’s correct, Welkes,” Pinescar said, deep in thought. “By all rights, this shouldn’t be a trap. Yet it seems like one to me, too.”
“Fuck!” Harper cursed softly.
“Sir, shouldn’t we just try, you know....go through?”
“I would not be so rash, Palemoon, not yet,” said Sergeant. “This is nothing I’ve heard of happening....”
“So this is the first time? Fuck me! Why are we so damn lucky,” Harper groaned, completely forgetting to address Pinescar properly. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Palemoon. I’d rather try my luck there,” she said, pointing vaguely ahead at the shift in space. “...than pissing my pants here. And no fucking word, Pointy Ears.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Freyde just held up his hands, backing away.
“I’ll forgive your attitude, for now, Breadbaker. Don’t make it a habit, though. About your suggestion, there are plenty of guys and gals like you, the kind who prefer to face their fears and the unknown head-on. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but before we do it, I’d try to get around that thing. We don’t know for sure if it’s a circle. And one more thing. It would be a huge mistake to think that this is the first time something like this has happened in the labyrinth. If anything, those who encountered similar shit either didn’t report it or...” Harper wasn’t the only one who swallowed dry when he didn’t finish the sentence and only hinted at a second possibility. They were either dead or still trapped somewhere in Fallen’s Cry.
“You think the voices I’m hearing from the other side belong to the ones who tried to get through, sir?”
“I don’t know, Grey. But call it a hunch; going through that is the last thing I want to do.”
There was no denying that there wasn’t an ounce of curiosity in me. I wondered what would happen if we just tried to walk through, if we would really find ourselves somewhere unknown or just continue on our way. I wanted to know who the voices belonged to, but not so badly that I’d risk getting trapped in there with them becoming one of those voices seekers sometimes hear in the labyrinth. Simply, I couldn’t agree more with Sergeant Pinescar on this.
“Any problem keeping the Thread up, Ironhoof?” the man asked, making sure that even though the magic thread connecting the ring on Meneur’s finger to the disc on the platform out there somewhere snaked through the distortion in space, we still had the connection and essentially the way back.
“All seems well, sir.”
It wasn’t that we wouldn’t be able to find our way back without the tool. After all, this was only the tenth floor, a floor on which I was still able to use the trick Deckard had taught - the runes on the labyrinth blocks thing. However, there was no denying that it was nice to know we weren’t completely fucked…yet.
Nirrvash So...? Was it a bunch of nonsense or well-delivered tension?
